[Levi] Eshkol and Johnson got along well, and though Israel received no tangible benefits from the visit, the prime minister did obtain the strongest public commitment to Israeli security that an American President had offered to that time. “The United States,” Johnson told his visitor, “is foursquare behind Israel on all matters that affect their vital security interests.”
Johnson inherited from Kennedy a U.S.-Israeli relationship with two major sticking points: nuclear non-proliferation and arms sales. Kennedy had made nuclear non-proliferation a key goal of U.S. foreign policy just as Ben-Gurion’s government committed to developing an Israeli nuclear weapon. The United States had first become aware of the Dimona facility in 1958, but only in late 1960 did Ben-Gurion concede that it was a nuclear facility (intended, he asserted, for “peaceful purposes” only). Within a month of becoming President, Kennedy demanded that Ben-Gurion allow U.S. inspectors to visit the site; the Israeliprime minister responded vaguely, promising to grant such permission at some point in the future. A series of sharp diplomatic exchanges between the two nations crested in 1963, with Israel finally agreeing to inspection just before Ben-Gurion left office. Yet no clear inspections regime was in place when Johnson took over as President.
Meanwhile, Israel looked to the United States as an arms supplier, to supplement or eventually replace its traditional outlets in Western Europe.
In 1962, John Kennedy made the first major U.S. weapons sale to Israel, when he authorized delivery of Hawk missiles. Despite such assistance, by the early 1960s, the Arab states were spending a combined $938 million annually on arms, around twice Israel’s level. And the Soviet Union showered Israel’senemies with military assistance, sending $2 billion in military aid to the region (including 1700 tanks, 2400 artillery pieces, and 500 jets) between 1956 and 1967. Forty-three percent of this total went to Nasser’s government in Egypt; between 1961 and 1965 alone, Nasser received 530 T-34, T-54, and T-55 tanks. Johnson initially retained his predecessor’s approach, if not Kennedy’s ardor, regarding Israeli nuclear non-proliferation. But by the time Eshkol arrived in the United States, Johnson already had begun to reassess Washington’s standoffish approach to supplying Israel with arms.
...Johnson’s willingness to aid Israel flowed in part from personal concerns. As he told one Israeli diplomat shortly after the assassination, “You have lost a very great friend. But you have found a better one.” Even though he came from a Texas environment populated by few Jews and fewer Zionists, Johnson had worked closely with a variety of pro-Israel figures before coming to the presidency. In many ways, he owed his political career to Abe Fortas, a committed Zionist and the attorney who masterminded his defense in the 1948 election dispute. Fortas remained a counselor to Johnson throughout his career;
[source : Robert David Johnson, Lyndon Johnson and Israel: The Secret Presidential Recordings
So you can see what happened? JFK was not that helpful to Israel and wanted them to stop their nuke program. LBJ was very helpful to Israel and wanted them to have nukes.
This guy Abe Fortas was forced to resign after it was found he was taking bungs from Louis Wolfson, who was a client of Roy Cohn!
And isn't it interesting that the Executive Producer of Oliver Stone's film JFK was Arnon Milchan.
So who is Milchan?
“Confidential: The Life of Secret Agent Turned Hollywood Tycoon Arnon Milchan,” written by Meir Doron and Joseph Gelman, and set for publication on July 30 by Gefen Books, now holds that Mr. Milchan — whose credits include “Love and Other Drugs” and “Knight and Day” — at least through the mid-1980s was a full-fledged operative for Israel’s top-secret intelligence agency, Lakam. (The acronym is from the Hebrew for the blandly named Science Liaison Bureau.)
In that capacity, according to the book, Mr. Milchan supervised government-backed accounts and front companies that financed “the special needs of the entirety of Israel’s intelligence operations outside the country.”
The “special needs” serviced by Mr. Milchan, who is now 66 years old, included buying components to build and maintain Israel’s nuclear arsenal.
[source : New Book Recounts Tale of Israeli Agent at Home in Hollywood, NY Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/18/business/global/new-book-tells-tale-of-israeli-arms-dealer-in-hollywood.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss, 17th July 2011]
So Milchan was one of the most powerful and secret Israeli agents in the world!!
And there he was overseeing Stone's JFK which blamed the assassination of JFK on a network of CIA, mob and Cubans, while totally ignoring JFKs opposition to the Israeli nuke project and LBJ okaying it.
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